Fearless Magic Read Free Page B

been able to sleep since before.... since before the battle and always I woke in pools of cold sweat, screaming and lashing out. The nightmares kept the wild animals away and my magic kept my blood warm in the frozen temperatures once the sun was set.
    Nightmares plagued my sleep since Avalon was taken. Every time my eyes closed the haunting torment of my subconscious attacked and I was always thankful just to be awake, gasping for air and clutching my throat, but awake.
    At first, I wondered if maybe they were dream-walks, that I was being tortured in a subconscious sleep-world without my knowledge. But, always before, the dream-walk had been done consciously, and I was always capable of remembering the details when I awoke. These nightmares were fuzzy and disorienting and always, the particulars slipped away before I could put them together.
    I breathed in relief, finally making my way past the modern structures set up as gift shops and ticket booths and to the doorway leading into the age-old city. It was very early in the morning and there was not a soul around. I stepped carefully through the stone passageway and onto the rough carefully shaped rock walkways that stood the test of time.
    I was alone. At this height, and with the ancient city sprawling down the mountainside at my feet, I was never more alone. I walked the stone pathways and up the hundreds of stone steps to the highest point of the Incan citadel.
    I stood next to a wide square stone that was taller than me and housed some kind of pyramid built onto the top of it and felt myself moved again. Machu Picchu was a religious experience, a moment in my life when my soul felt bigger than my body.
    I stood with arms wide and chin tipped towards the sun rising in the east, over the pointed mountain peaks. I breathed the thin, crisp air finding a perspective bigger than me, bigger than my problems. I stayed like that for a while, drinking in the sacredness surrounding me.
    The Shape-shifter colony was close, the magic grew steadily stronger the deeper into the mountains I hiked and now I could feel the direction it was located in, clearly. Pressed with urgency until this moment, I took in the height of an antiquated citadel that still stood, despite the modern world, as a gateway to the past. The hundreds of buildings made from chiseled stone, stairs worn with age and use, and religious structures for archaic gods all but forgotten, shined as sobering reminders that kingdoms rise and fall. I was just a small piece in the tides of change that dictated the currents of life. I had a part to play, but if I failed, someone else would rise. Injustice would not always be victor of this life.
    The magic began to grow stronger, my blood igniting with the warning signs of an approaching magic. I dropped my arms, and opened my eyes, but I would not move. Whoever was out there would come to me.
    A flash of black between two stone columns caught my attention. I witnessed wild animals along the hike here, but the soft coat of an alpaca was nothing quite like the sleek black fur of a wild panther. I tilted my head, waiting for the man to turn back human.
    "I was coming to you," I called out before the man made himself known. "You didn't have to meet me."
    "You're confident that you could have found us?" he asked in his rich Jamaican accent, smugly assured that I would not have been able to.
    Silas stepped from behind the stone archway, leading up to the sacred high place. His skin was as dark as the fur of his panther shape. He wore the same brown work pants and forest green sweater I saw him in the night I first time we met.
    "I guess, we will never know," I replied, not willing to humble myself, but not wanting to insult him either.
    "So, you have come then. It has gone badly," Silas stated, and his words felt like a harsh accusation.
    "Yes, but you knew that it would," I answered. We stood awkwardly far apart from each other. I expected a warm greeting and a man thankful that I